AfriLean assists companies to sustainably improve their business systems and manufacturing processes. These range from manufacturing (cement to chocolate), moulding (glass, aluminium & PVC), filling (drinks to cleaning liquids), printing and packaging. For any change or continuous improvement initiative to be sustainable people have to see the benefit and take ownership of the system or process.
Nampak Tissue
Renox Chauke and Alfred Jele are operators in the winder section who watched a previous shift go through a 5S exercise. During one night shift they had some downtime at the end of their production run so decided to implement some of their improvement ideas on their equipment with amazing results.
They changed all the nuts and bolts to ‘one turn’ release catches and designed and fitted their glue bins with plastic liners to speed up changeovers and reduce cleaning. Their comment…“we work smarter not harder”
Johnson & Johnson Savlon line
A standard changeover from 50ml to 250ml on the Savlon line executed by 2 fitters usually took 5hrs 30min. After attending a SMED course operators were trained on non-technical elements of the changeover. As a result the team completed the same changeover in 2hrs 56min.
The project was so successful that a full time changeover specialist was employed to train and manage all changeovers in the plant. Comment from the Director of Operations Leon Kruger was “My team have done what I previously thought was impossible”.
